Defamation

Dominion Sues Two Conservative News Networks and a Trump Ally for Defamation

On August 10th, Dominion Voting Systems filed three separate $1.6 billion defamation suits against two conservative news networks and a Trump ally.

The defamation suits, filed against Newsmax in the Superior Court in the State of Delaware, and against One America News Network (OANN) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, allege that the networks manufactured and promoted a series of lies about Dominion. 

 Newsmax and OANN  “helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where up is down, pigs have wings, and Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud to steal the presidency from Donald Trump by rigging the vote,” both complaints read.

The complaints allege that both OANN and Newsmax were competing against Fox News for viewers and advertising dollars, and as result, “Dominion quickly became the focus of this downward spiral of lies, as each broadcaster attempted to outdo the others by making the lies more outrageous, spreading them further, and endorsing them as strongly as possible.”

Trump ally and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne was also sued by Dominion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the complaint accuses Byrne of promoting falsehoods about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. 

“After blowing up his career at Overstock by having an affair with a Russian spy, Patrick Byrne soon found himself a new pet project: promoting the false narrative that the 2020 election had been stolen. In fact, as Byrne has publicly admitted, he had already committed to that narrative three months before the election took place. After the election, Byrne manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a massive international conspiracy among China, Venezuelan and Spanish companies, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), prominent Republicans, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Dominion, which, Byrne falsely claimed, committed fraud and helped steal the 2020 presidential election,” the complaint reads.

Byrne was a frequent guest on OANN, and Dominion alleges that through his lies, Byrne “catapulted himself back into the national spotlight, where he promoted himself as an “us-against-the-world’ hero, and won access to the highest echelons of political power, including an in-person meeting with Trump at the White House.” 

Dominion also accuses Byrne of lying to enrich himself as he has invested millions of dollars in blockchain voting technology which would ostensibly replace Dominion’s voting software if it fell out of favor.

The three suits are the latest in a series of billion dollar defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion related to alleged disinformation relating to the 2020 presidential election. In January, Dominion filed two separate suits against former Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Guiliani. And in February, Dominion sued MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and the following month it sued Fox News. 

All of those parties have denied the allegations, and have asked the court to dismiss their suits. Those motions are pending.  

Newsmax Complaint      OANN Complaint    Byrne Complaint


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